James R. Hackney, Jr., Northeastern Law, has put up
an SSRN post heralding the publication next month of
Legal Intellectuals in Conversation: Reflections on the Construction of Contemporary American Legal Theory by NYU Press. Here is Hackney's SSRN abstract:
In this book the author examines the trajectory of American legal theory in the late 20th century by way of interviewing ten leading theorists. The interviews conducted with Bruce Ackerman, Jules Coleman, Drucilla Cornell, Charles Fried, Morton Horwitz, Duncan Kennedy, Catharine MacKinnon, Richard Posner, Austin Sarat, and Patricia Williams cover a wide breadth of contemporary legal theory — including law and economics, critical legal studies, rights theory, law and philosophy, critical race theory, critical legal history, feminist theory, postmodern theory, and law and society. The topics raised in the conversations include the early lives of interviewees as thinkers and scholars, their contributions to American legal theory, and their thoughts regarding some fundamental questions in legal academe.
Here is the press's version:
In this unique volume, James Hackney invites readers to enter the minds of 10 legal experts that in the late 20th century changed the way we understand and use theory in law today. True to the title of the book, Hackney spent hours in conversation with legal intellectuals, interviewing them about their early lives as thinkers and scholars, their contributions to American legal theory, and their thoughts regarding some fundamental theoretical questions in legal academe, particularly the law/politics debate. Legal Intellectuals in Conversation is a veritable “Who’s Who” of legal thought, presented in a sophisticated yet intimate manner.
